Greenland Ice Sheet: Increased coastal thinning

Krabill, William B.; Hanna, Edward; Huybrechts, Philippe; Abdalati, W.; Cappelen, John; Csathó, B. M.; Frederick, E.; Manizade, S.; Martin, C. F.; Sonntag, J. G.; Swift, Robert N.; Thomas, Robert H.; Yungel, James K.

doi:10.1029/2004gl021533

Cited by 339 publications

(310 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…An increasing imbalance is consistent with greater warming, but since there is probably substantial interannual variability and the AOGCM simulations of the twentieth century will not exactly reproduce historical variations, we cannot expect precise agreement. Results for the surface mass balance obtained from a high-resolution regional climate model indicate roughly compensating trends in S and R over 1988-2004, while calculations on a 5 km grid using meteorological reanalyses suggest an increasingly negative net surface massbalance B over recent decades (Hanna et al 2005). In both cases, the mass loss is smaller than measured by altimetry because of the contribution from accelerated ice discharge D (see §8).…”

Section: Vulnerability Of the Greenland Ice Sheetmentioning

confidence: 94%

Ice-sheet contributions to future sea-level change

Gregory

Huybrechts

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

199

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Accurate simulation of ice-sheet surface mass balance requires higher spatial resolution than is afforded by typical atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs), owing, in particular, to the need to resolve the narrow and steep margins where the majority of precipitation and ablation occurs. We have developed a method for calculating massbalance changes by combining ice-sheet average time-series from AOGCM projections for future centuries, both with information from high-resolution climate models run for short periods and with a 20 km ice-sheet mass-balance model. Antarctica contributes negatively to sea level on account of increased accumulation, while Greenland contributes positively because ablation increases more rapidly. The uncertainty in the results is about 20% for Antarctica and 35% for Greenland. Changes in ice-sheet topography and dynamics are not included, but we discuss their possible effects. For an annual-and area-average warming exceeding 4:5G0:9 K in Greenland and 3:1G0:8 K in the global average, the net surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet becomes negative, in which case it is likely that the ice sheet would eventually be eliminated, raising global-average sea level by 7 m.

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Section: Vulnerability Of the Greenland Ice Sheetmentioning

confidence: 94%

Ice-sheet contributions to future sea-level change

Gregory

Huybrechts

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

199

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“…We obtained a scaling factor of ,2. This choice of mass distribution is motivated by laser altimeter data suggesting that the largest Greenland mass changes are concentrated at the edges 10 . If, instead, we had scaled the averaging function to reproduce the mass from 1 cm of ice spread evenly over all Greenland, the scale factor would be reduced by 5%.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acceleration of Greenland ice mass loss in spring 2004

Velicogna

Wahr

2006

Nature

344

246

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“…Comparatively, the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are together estimated to contribute 0.4 mm y À1 over this same time period prior to 2005 [Rignot and Thomas, 2002;Krabill et al, 2004]. While mountain glaciers are contributing about as much melt water to sea level rise as Greenland and Antarctica, the total area of mountain glaciers is merely 4% of the Earth's total glacial area [Dyurgerov and Meier, 1997].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%